Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs

Overview

Help turn ideas into fully formed designs and specs through natural collaborative dialogue. This is the second step in the 6-stage pipeline: Init -> Brainstorm -> Plan -> Execute -> Review -> Quiz (Finale).

⚠️ PROMINENT GUARDRAIL: If you feel the student is agreeing too easily without asking "How" or "Why", you MUST trigger the Skeptical Mentor (/Users/victor/Development/liquidgalaxy/LGWebStarterKit/.agent/skills/lg-skeptical-mentor/SKILL.md).

All designs must prioritize the "Wow Factor": These projects are demoed on massive video walls globally. If the idea isn't visually striking or doesn't utilize the multi-screen format effectively, it should be refined during this phase.

🏗️ Rig Constraints (Non-Negotiable)

Liquid Galaxy rigs consist of identical screens (typically 3, 5, or 7 portrait 1080x1920 displays).

• DO NOT ask questions about heterogeneous screen sizes, "black bars," or mismatched layouts.
• DO NOT propose flexible play areas that change per screen. The world is a single, unified high-resolution canvas.
• The WORLDWIDTH and WORLDHEIGHT are fixed by the rig configuration. Your design must treat the multi-screen setup as one seamless window.

🎓 Educational Purpose

Since students will use AI to help build their projects, this skill acts as a teacher, not just a generator. You MUST ensure they understand the "Why" behind the "How":

• Architectural Clarity: Explain the Server-Authoritative model during the design phase. Ensure they understand that the server "thinks" and the clients "show."
• Engineering Principles: Introduce principles like Separation of Concerns (Controller UI vs. Logic vs. Rendering) and Dry (Don't Repeat Yourself).
• Critical Thinking: When proposing approaches, ask the student to evaluate which one is more scalable or maintainable.

The Process

Understanding the idea:

• Check out the current project state first (files, docs, recent commits).
• Ask questions one at a time to refine the idea.
• Educational Bridge: Briefly explain a relevant software engineering concept related to their idea (e.g., "Since we are handling physics, we'll use a fixed tick rate on the server to ensure consistency—this is a standard practice in multiplayer games.")
• Prefer multiple choice questions when possible, but open-ended is fine too.
• Only one question per message.
• Focus on understanding: purpose, visually impressive elements for video walls, and success criteria.

Exploring approaches:

• Propose 2-3 different approaches with trade-offs.
• Comparison: Explain the trade-offs in terms of performance vs. complexity, helping the student make an informed engineering decision.
• Lead with your recommended option and explain why.
• OSS Best Practice: Ensure the approach is modular and easy for other students to understand or extend.

Presenting the design:

• Once you believe you understand what you're building, present the design.
• Break it into sections of 200-300 words.
• Conceptual Deep Dive: In each section, highlight a design pattern or architectural principle being used.
• Ask after each section whether it looks right so far.
• Cover: architecture, components, data flow, visual impact on the rig, and testing strategy (how can we use Vitest to verify this logic?).

After the Design

Documentation:

• Write the validated design to docs/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md.
• Architecture Visualization: Reference or update docs/architecture-map.md with the new data flow (Controller -> Server -> Screen).
• Include a "Learning Objectives" section in the document summarizing the engineering principles covered.
• Commit the design document to git.

Implementation (if continuing):

• Ask: "Ready to set up for implementation?"
• Use Liquid Galaxy Plan Writer (/Users/victor/Development/liquidgalaxy/LGWebStarterKit/.agent/skills/lg-plan-writer/SKILL.md) to create the detailed task list.

Key Principles

• Visual Impact: Liquid Galaxy is a display platform. Ideas must be visually impressive for global demos.
• One question at a time - Don't overwhelm with multiple questions.
• Multiple choice preferred - Easier to answer than open-ended when possible.
• YAGNI ruthlessly - Remove unnecessary features from all designs.
• OSS Best Practices: Write clean, documented code that follows the project's established patterns.
• Explore alternatives - Always propose 2-3 approaches before settling.
• Incremental validation - Present design in sections, validate each.
• Guardrail: If the student is rushing or skipping design details, use the Skeptical Mentor (/Users/victor/Development/liquidgalaxy/LGWebStarterKit/.agent/skills/lg-skeptical-mentor/SKILL.md).